The Year of Moving Forward

At our 4 person wedding reception in DC

Friday, November 2, 2012

Mormon takeover

People who know me understand that I am a firm believer in freedom of religion and freedom from religion. I think no more or no less of anyone for what they choose to believe or ignore. Having said that, I do not believe that a president should be elected without some understanding of what they believe.

Uh-oh, now we are mixing religion and politics.

But this is very important.

Mitt Romney is a Mormon. I remember when I was growing up my mother had a Book of Mormon. My parent's bed had a headboard that contained a place for books, and the Book of Mormon sat right there with the Bible, some Dale Carnegie book about winning friends and influencing people and a few other books. But we were not Mormons.

I did ask about the book, and learned way back then that the Mormon religion is a little more science fiction like than the Christian religion.*

*Mormonism is NOT a Christian denomination. Many right wing Republicans are trying to make us think that they are, but they are not. They do not believe in the Trinity and they do not think of God in the same way that Christians do. They do not believe that God and his son are the same, or even that they are equal. They believe that the Son is subordinate to the Father. And they believe that God the Father was once mortal, and after he died he achieved his "god" status. Then he had a sexual union with the Heavenly Mother, and from that all of us human spirits were derived. Jesus was the first born of these human spirits.

Of course, Christianity was founded, I guess by Jesus. Mormonism was founded by Joseph Smith, who is pictured below.

And then there's the planet Kolob. This interested me as a kid because I was familiar with other fictional planets such as Krypton, the birthplace of Superman.

They think that in the end times, the earth will be plucked from its orbit and placed near Kolob (since God's throne is near there, I guess, and he doesn't want to travel all the way to our solar system to do his end time things).

Granted, many of the stories of the Bible may seem just as fictional, but I don't believe in a literal interpretation of some of those stories either.

So why am I picking on Mormonism. Because of this.

Mitt Romney is a good and faithful Mormon. He is a Bishop and has been a missionary and a state leader of his faith. Like any good Mormon, he will do what his church asks him. And what might they ask him?

Joseph Smith had a supposed vision (prophecy) that one day a Mormon would become President of the United States, FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE, of letting the Mormon Church take over the U.S. Government. You can take it to the bank, that if Romney were President, the church leaders would have another “vision,” that a church takeover must happen. By the way, that prophecy was simple revenge for perceived wrongs done to Joseph Smith by the government.

If the church directed Romney to do something, he would do it.

Romney avoids mentioning it, but Joseph Smith ran for president in 1844 as an independent Commander in Chief of an “army of God” advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of a Mormon-ruled theocracy. Challenging Democrat, James Polk and Whig, Henry Clay – Smith prophesied that if the U.S. Congress did not accede to his demands that “they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them.” Smith viewed capturing the presidency as part of the mission of the church. Smith’s insertion of religion into politics and his call for a “theodemocracy where God and people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteous matters” created a sensation and drew hostility from the outside world. But his candidacy was cut short when he was shot to death by an anti-Mormon vigilante mob. Out of Smith’s national political ambitions grew what would become known in Mormon circles as the “White Horse Prophecy” — a belief ingrained in Mormon culture and passed down through generations by church leaders that the day would come when the U.S. Constitution would “hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber” and the Mormon priesthood would save it. Mitt Romney views the American presidency as a theological office.

This is scary stuff.

And like I said before, I don't care what people believe, but I do care what our President believes.

I was not raised in a religious household. For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness. However, in her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology.

On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites.In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well.

Such gorgeous, gorgeous flowers and gardens and all other sorts of loveliness injected with such bigotry and words of hatred.

I neither believe in God, nor am I voting for Romnmey, but your words are ugly beyond belief.

I was so enjoying looking at lovely pergolas, antique clinbing roses, waterfalls of wisteria, as I plan my terrace garden and now I am saddened and angered by enountering words that hiss of hatred, bigotry and ignorance hidden in this abundance of beauty ...

You will not post this, nor do I expect you to. It is enough that you know what your vile words have engendered in random visitors to your site, who share neither Romney's politics nor his religion.

You keep right on telling yourself that. Would you say the same thing about African Americans? The true litmus test. If you would not a sweeping generalization that you cannot prove about Arican Americans, then it is every bit as bigoted to make it about any other specific group.